Omer Bartov: Hitler Is Dead, Hitlerism Lives

Omer Bartov, reviewing a new edition of Hitler's Second Book; in the
New Republic
(Feb. 2, 2004):

Reading Hitler's second book is useful, of course, for students of Nazism.
But they will have already read it in part or in whole, and nothing that Hitler
says here will come to them as much of a surprise. This is a book that should
be read, rather, by contemporary journalists, political observers, and all
concerned people who have the stomach to recognize evil when they confront
it. For one of the most frightening aspects of Hitler's book is not that he
said what he said at the time, but that much of what he said can be found
today in innumerable places: on Internet sites, propaganda brochures, political
speeches, protest placards, academic publications, religious sermons, you
name it. As long as it does not have Hitler's name attached to it, this deranged
discourse will be ignored or allowed to pass. The voices that express these
opinions do not belong to a single political or ideological current, and they
are much less easy to distinguish than in the 1930s. They belong to the right
and the left, to the religious and the secular, to the West and the East,
to the rabble and the leaders, to terrorists and intellectuals, students and
peasants, pacifists and militants, expansionists and anti-globalization activists.
The diplomacy advocated by Hitler is no longer relevant, but his reason for
it, his legitimization of his "worldview," is alive and kicking,
and it may still kick us. ...

Hitler is dead, as Leon Wieseltier rightly proclaimed in these pages. What
alarmed Wieseltier was the frequent predilection to view every threat as the
ultimate threat, every anti-Semitic harangue as the gateway to another Final
Solution. Clearly we are not facing the danger of a second Auschwitz. The
hysterics need to remember that Hitler and the Third Reich are history. Germany
apologized and paid generous restitution. The Nazis were tried, or they hid,
or they metamorphosed into good democrats. The state of Israel was established.
The Jews have never been more prosperous and more successful and more safe
than they are in the United States. (The same could even be said about the
nervous Jews of Western Europe.) The last remnants of communist anti-Semitism
vanished with the fall of that "evil empire." Jews in our day have
reasons to feel much more secure than their ancestors.

But all is not well, not by a long shot. Criticism of Israeli policies against
the Palestinians has long been attached to anti-Americanism, and the United
States was said already by the Nazis in World War II to be dominated by the
Jews. And criticism of American imperialism is often associated with its support
for Israel, allegedly a colonial outpost populated by Jews in the heart of
Arab and Islamic civilization. Of course, one should never confuse the legitimate
criticism of Israeli policies with what all reasonable people agree is the
despicable ideology of anti-Semitism. The policies of the current Israeli
government in the territories are indeed contrary to the strategic and moral
interests of the Jewish state. So there is every reason in the world to reject
attempts to justify objectionable Israeli policies by reference to the Holocaust.

But this does not mean that we should refuse to see the writing on the wall
when anti-Israeli sentiments are transformed into blatant and virulent anti-Semitism.
This was precisely the argument made in the report "Manifestations of
anti-Semitism in the European Union," as submitted by the Center for
Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin to the European Monitoring Center on Racism
and Xenophobia, which had originally commissioned it. The monitoring center
tried to suppress its own report, because it gave a measure of anti-Semitic
violence by Muslims in Europe, and because its definition of anti-Semitism
included those who call for the destruction of Israel. And these grim truths
were politically incorrect. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip is stupid and destructive, and it should be ended through the creation
of a Palestinian state, but those who preach the destruction of the Jewish
state should not be allowed to hide behind Sharon's unfortunate policies.
It is one thing to support the cause of Palestinian nationhood, and quite
another to deny the Jews the right to live in their own state....

Much more publicity has been given to anti-Israeli protests on American campuses,
and these have demonstrated a troubling trend. A group calling itself "New
Jersey Solidarity: Activists for the Destruction of Israel" called for
an "anti-Israel hate-fest" to be held on the campus of Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, in October 2003. The group's website declares itself "opposed
to the existence of the apartheid colonial settler state of Israel, as it
is based on the racist ideology of Zionism and is an expression of colonialism
and imperialism."

Richard McCormick, the president of Rutgers University and a former member
of its history department, where I also taught during the 1990s, issued an
open letter on the planned meeting. He stated that he found "abhorrent
some elements of NJ Solidarity's mission." But he went on to say that
"intrinsic to Rutgers' own mission is the free exchange of ideas and
discourse on a variety of issues, including those that are controversial.
This university must remain a model of debate, dialogue and education ...
we encourage our students to express their beliefs and analyze the difficult
issues of the day." So some may think that destroying Israel is legitimate
and some may think otherwise. Some may think that Israel is an apartheid colonial
settler state based on a racist ideology, and some may have a different opinion.
There are two sides to the question. Through such a "free exchange of
ideas" we will all prosper intellectually. This brings to mind Hannah
Arendt's observation, when she visited Germany in 1950, for the first time
since she fled the Nazis, that the Germans viewed the extermination of the
Jews as a matter of opinion: some said it happened, some said it had not happened.
Who could tell? The average German, she wrote, considered this "nihilistic
relativism" about the facts as an essential expression of democracy.